Cancer takes college-bound teen

STOCKTON - It was early August, and Esmeralda Mexicano wanted the world to know that her dreams were coming true.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - It was early August, and Esmeralda Mexicano wanted the world to know that her dreams were coming true.

"Oh how I'm loving my college life," she wrote in a Twitter post Aug. 8. The next day: "Going to the observatory to see Saturn. I find that pretty cool lol." And on Aug. 11: "Seeing my roommates be stressed off the readings makes me glad that I didn't procrastinate and that I'm already done."

Three months later, family members and friends are trying to make sense of the loss of the 18-year-old Mexicano, a 2013 Edison High School graduate whose life changed suddenly and tragically during a two-week orientation for incoming students at the University of California, Irvine.

On Aug. 13, she wrote that she was going to a hospital. She was having difficulty breathing. Before August was over, Mexicano had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was undergoing exhausting rounds of chemotherapy at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. On Saturday night, surrounded by family and friends, she died at St. Joseph's Medical Center.

"It's really hard," 18-year-old Rosario Perez, one of Mexicano's high school friends, said Monday. "Before she left for Irvine for the summer program, she wanted to have a goodbye dinner, and a couple of us went. She said, 'I'm going to miss you.' We said, 'Esmee, you're leaving for your dreams. Whenever you come back, we'll hang out.' "

The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Mexicano was on track to be the first in her family to graduate from a four-year university. She had been one of 300 recipients from a national application pool of more than 7,500 to receive a Dell scholarship, a prize awarded to students raised in inner-city poverty.

The girl who loved to wear her Jordans and play soccer was going to study criminal justice, then planned to bring her knowledge back to Stockton to try to make her hometown a better place.

When she learned she had cancer, her friend Alex Zuniga recalled, she said "it was just a timing obstacle she had to overcome, and then she would go back to Irvine." Another friend, Maria Carrasco, added, "We knew she had big goals. We all knew she was going to achieve them. I really didn't think we'd have to say all these things about her so soon. She was too young."

Mexicano's right lung was removed during an Oct. 29 operation in Sacramento. She returned home Wednesday and was to use an oxygen machine to help her breathe. But her parents, Susana and Arturo Mexicano, say the machine malfunctioned, and their daughter began struggling to breathe by Thursday evening.

Friday night's Edison football game had been dedicated to her by the school weeks earlier. Mexicano had been planning to attend. Instead, her father rushed her to St. Joseph's.

Claudia Moreno, a 22-year Edison High dropout-prevention specialist who was close to Mexicano and her family, left the game in the third quarter and headed to St. Joseph's. She brought Esmeralda an Edison High beanie and a fundraising T-shirt that said, "Esmeralda's fight is our fight. No one in the Edison family fights alone!"

Moreno was in the room when Esmeralda died 24 hours later.

"She had such enormous personality and spirit and was the epitome of showing hard work and tenacity," Moreno said. "It's very personal. You see up close the struggle of a student wanting to do great things in life and then her struggling for life, literally."

On Monday afternoon in south Stockton, Esmeralda's parents and other relatives gathered in the small living room of their apartment. Moreno translated as they spoke in Spanish.

"She didn't want us to see her suffer," Arturo Mexicano said. "Every time she was in pain, she asked us to leave. She gives us that strength to cope."

Susana Mexicano thought back to her feelings only three months earlier, when Esmeralda headed to Irvine.

"It meant nothing but pride," Susana said. "She had worked so hard to get nothing but straight A's. At least she was able to be there for one week. She had prepared herself and was very excited."